


no i in threesome

by blurhawaii



Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: First Time, Light Dom/sub, Masturbation, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 06:03:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14129646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurhawaii/pseuds/blurhawaii
Summary: Laszlo clears his throat. “Any ground rules, I assume, would defeat the purpose of this exercise.”“Once we all sit down,” Sara says, “I would like to think that meant we were consenting.”“No one should feel forced to do this, however, just because the others do,” John adds, with a timid glance at Laszlo, and it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do.He may as well have baited a hook.





	no i in threesome

**Author's Note:**

> Hardest thing I've ever tried to write, no question. All filler, mostly no killer. An exercise in losing momentum. Enjoy.

“I have an idea,” Sara says, apropos of seemingly nothing. She shakes her head, figuring something’s not quite right with that, and tries again. “A game,” she says this time, and that’s somehow worse.

John’s startled into a laugh anyway, passing off the book he’s only pretending to read. His smile soon slips away when he sees she’s serious. He looks curiously to Laszlo and is struck even further off-beat when he finds the man’s usual unsettled disposition has sharpened. Like the highest ringing note of an opera, Laszlo is vibrating under his skin. John turns back to Sara feeling like he’s missed a step somewhere along the way.

“A game played by three,” John says, a tentative reach. “A game of what?”

“Of truth,” Sara says. “And the relentless discovery of it.”

 

 

The triangle of chairs Sara constructs is small. So very small. Their knees are going to be brushing with every affected shift and fidget. Tells that are impossible to hide.

_Open minds lead to open hearts_ , Sara comments as she works--far too cheerfully--and in his periphery view John catches Laszlo pulling his arm in tighter against his body.

It’s entirely possible that this is a very bad idea. One that could ruin them. But Sara has already positioned herself behind one of the chairs and John hurries to do the same. The only thing that gives John reassurance is the white knuckled grip he sees her take on the back of the chair. They turn to include Laszlo almost in tandem and he slowly, clearly reluctantly, steps into place.

Laszlo clears his throat. “Any ground rules, I assume, would defeat the purpose of this exercise.”

“Once we all sit down,” Sara says, “I would like to think that meant we were consenting.”

“No one should feel forced to do this, however, just because the others do,” John adds, with a timid glance at Laszlo, and it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do.

He may as well have baited a hook.

 

 

“First of all,” Sara says the moment they’re seated, “I believe you owe me an apology, Doctor.”

For being the first shot fired into a warzone, it’s remarkably calm in its delivery.

Laszlo crosses one leg over the other and pinches the fabric bunched above his knee. He gives it a shake until it falls just right and then dips his head. “Very well. I shouldn’t have struck you. We deal with violence enough in our lives that I am loathe to add to it. I _am_ sorry.”

“Excuse me,” John says, pushing his whole body forward into the circle, like he thinks that will get them to pay him closer attention. “You hit her? Laszlo, of all the bull-headed things--”

“John,” Sara’s quick to interrupt him. “He apologised. I’m past it.”

“You may very well be past it,” he says, growing more irate with each word, “but I most certainly am not.”

“John,” she says again, reaching out for his wrist and looping her fingers around it. He goes limp, falling quiet in an instant and Sara continues as though nothing about this is odd or unexpected. “The main reason I brought it up was to ask you, Laszlo, about your relationship with pain. I want to know, did it excite you, when you hit me?”

John’s pulse jolts under the steady press of her fingers. A marvelous contrast to how still Laszlo manages to keep. They had both been expecting a different question. John remembering the ink stains that old article had left behind on his sweaty hands. And Laszlo, something much more tangible. Two smaller hands, possibly, poised above some piano keys.

This other direction spells danger of a different kind.

“No,” Laszlo simply says, “not particularly.”

Sara nods. “And what about the actuality of someone striking you, Doctor? Could that bring you pleasure?”

Inexplicably, Laszlo’s gaze flickers to John. The brief connection is as cutting as it is fleeting; John might have convinced himself he imagined it, if it wasn’t for Sara’s delicate pinch of his skin keeping him present and honest. She saw it, she means to say, and now he knows that she knows.

“In theory, perhaps,” Laszlo says, every word successfully drawn from his mouth a chore--you’d think he was chained to the chair from the very real pain on his face, and the truth that he isn't is almost even harder to grasp. “Though I imagine in practise I wouldn’t have a taste for it.”

“You imagine?”

And that’s John asking, despite himself. Despite his rapid heart and the fact that he feels like he’s floating far above this whole discussion; a desperate soul removed.

Laszlo is laughably prim when he shifts in his chair and explains. “I’ve asked patients to describe to me in detail how it feels to derive pleasure from pain. But I've never experienced it for myself. Not in--not in an intimate setting, that is.”

“Then how can you say for certain?” Sara asks, fearless in her charge, and in their tiny circle, in their high-ceilinged room, it seems to take on a life all of its own.

Games are meant to be fun, John reminds himself. This whole thing feels more like an interrogation. An experiment in gauging the tensile strength of a man who always snaps.

“I suppose I can’t,” Laszlo says at long last, “but I do have a lifetime of my own experiences in which to make inferences from.”

The grip around John’s wrist tightens up in that moment and though it feels much like a warning, it doesn’t prepare him nearly enough.

“Would you let John strike you now?” Sara asks, as clean and precise as a scalpel blade slicing through skin. “Just as an experiment?”

With a groan that sounds of intense pain, blood wells to the surface and John attempts to tug his hand free. But Sara holds firm. His heart is pounding something fierce in his chest and Laszlo is reacting very little past staring at him with those damnably dark eyes of his.

“Would you want to, John?” Laszlo asks, lifting his chin as if he’s presenting himself for a fist. His voice comes across as thoughtful and altogether deceptive in its softness, and it creeps inside of John like a frost in the air. 

John has wanted to hit the man numerous times, sure, wanted to lift him beyond the reach of his toes using only his lapels, wanted to dig his fingers into the ribs of the man and prove to himself, once and for all, that there’s a heart buried deep in there somewhere. Hold it in his hands maybe. Against his chest, close to his own.

In theory, he does. Very much so. But in practise--

“Good God, Laszlo, how could you even ask me that?”

A clock chimes the hour in another room. Another world for all they’re concerned. It’s a world of uneasy truths that they’re sitting in now and his lack of a clear _no_ is a kind of admonishing chime of its own. Laszlo uncrosses his legs and leans forward on one elbow, a very different predator than he is prey.

“I’m to believe that you’ve never once thought about it,” he says, “even as a most basic of instincts?”

John bristles at the implication--instinct, they think him a man unable to rise above it, next to debauchery and drink, violence is but a small step--and he finally manages to twist his wrist free from Sara’s grip in the frustration. She moves instead to gripping his knee and that’s worse for him in every way, but he’s also beginning to understand that maybe she needs its grounding effect more than he does. Or, just as likely, the control.

“Thinking about doing something and actually doing it are two very different weapons,” John says, all too consciously aware of what he is implying, that he is guilty of either. He attempts to level it out by adding, “You cannot punish a person for every unvoiced thought that they might have. The thing that sets us apart from the monsters is our ability to keep the two from ever meeting.”

“I believe that’s called repression, John,” Sara says at his side.

“And it’s responsible for some of the worst monsters,” Laszlo adds, unhelpfully.

John drags his hand through his hair. The way this day has spiralled out of his grasp it must be as harried as the rest of him. Overdressed is the word for what he feels. Caught up in his many layers. Sitting opposite Laszlo, who’s stripped down to his vest and shirtsleeves, and Sara in her simple blouse and skirt, there’s barely enough distance between them to think clearly, let alone for John to escape the choking clutch of his jacket.

“I should have known this was just an excuse for the two of you to gang up on me,” he says while attempting to peel the collar from his throat.

“You’re the only one circumventing the rules here, John.”

And, coming from Laszlo, that’s downright laughable.

“I must admit I’m having a hard time reconciling you, Laszlo, with the man that I know. The man who would sooner burn an undesirable bridge rather than ever cross it.”

Laszlo sits back. This strange three footed shuffle they have going on is just as quick to turn back in on itself, and it’s on that pushback that Laszlo is at his most vulnerable. “I am merely playing the game,” he says blithely and he then switches tactics completely, shifting his immense focus to Sara who, so far, has made it through this whole affair relatively unscathed. “I do wonder, Miss Howard, what exactly it is that you’re getting out of this? Besides having us at each other’s throats?”

They turn to Sara, an integral part of their little triangle--regardless of her gender or her position in society--and the only indication that she’s anything close to fazed is the touch bridging the gap to John. Past that, she’s regarding them both with an equal brand of severity.

“My intention,” she says, “believe it or not, was simply to clear the air. Putting our egos briefly aside, there are people, children I should say, counting on our ability to work together. I also thought that honing our analytical skills on each other could only be a positive endeavour.”

Doubt is the only way to describe Laszlo’s reaction to that and John feels furious on Sara’s behalf. Ashamed of Laszlo’s reaction to her thoughtfulness.

Laszlo’s humouring her when he asks, “And what have you learnt so far?”

“Only what I already suspected.” Sara then smoothes her skirt over her knees, a move that’s purely for show. For as long as John’s known her, she has never been one to give in to restlessness. She reaches out for Laszlo with all the confidence of a person in the know. A rare show of comradery in the face of his overwhelming skepticism. “You’re not a masochist, Laszlo,” she says, her hand just shy of touching him where so few even dare to acknowledge. “You’re just lonely.”

That, unsurprisingly, quietens Laszlo immediately.

 

 

John fumbles inside his jacket for his cigarette case. The brief time he gets to focus down into his own lap, it’s a much needed break for them all. Striking a match lit is a difficult task with his hands shaking as hard as they are and, for lack of a better place, he has to let the ash fall around their feet.

He despairs for Mary and the state of her knees but there’s no way he’s going to be the first to break the seal of their self imposed circle. This is a hill on which he plans to die.

“How _is_ the sobriety coming along, John?”

And it’s a shallow attempt from Laszlo, at regaining a semblance of footing.

With a bolstering pull to fuel the sentiment, John sticks out his chest and says, “Don’t try to be coy, Laszlo. It doesn’t suit you. I know for a fact you can see the tremors from your chair.”

The tremors are something John is trying to wear with pride but it’s a challenge, shifting that perception of weakness into a strength. In the end, they can only be as telling to the room as Laszlo’s hands are now, curling into untidy fists in his lap.

“I suppose I can’t simply be asking out of concern?”

“When exactly,” John says, struggling not to laugh, “have you ever concerned yourself before?”

Some of the discarded ash has fallen to colour the hem of Laszlo’s trousers a dull grey. He scowls at it but doesn’t attempt to brush it off. Instead he gets a faraway look about him and offers to the high ceiling, “I’m not above feeling things intensely, you realise, no matter what you both might think of me.”

When John dares to look closer, there are cracks beginning to appear in the man. Thin bleedings of light that signal change. Or, as Laszlo probably sees it, further malformation. He clearly doesn’t know what to do with a fight these days, doesn’t know how to deal with a sparring partner who simply refuses to bow out when faced with his rabbit punches.

Other than surrender to them, that is.

Sara squeezes his knee; she sees it too. Hopefully, though, she doesn’t share in Laszlo’s apathy for personal growth.

Sara then shakes John free of the revelation, of the crushing gravity of it, quite literally, rocking his leg in place with her hand. It’s a kindness on her part, to try and divert attention away from Laszlo--to give him space to adapt or to grieve, whichever he chooses to do, in his own time--and it’s in a way only a woman would think to do. With shrewd misdirection.

“May I ask what finally pushed you to quit?”

John gasps, drapes a theatrical hand over his heart, lit cigarette and all, and says, “You wound me, Sara. Though, I know you cannot honestly mean to.” At that, the corner of her mouth draws up into a sly smile and John is forced to rethink even his most wildest preconceived notions surrounding this woman. He drops the dramatics and considers her again. “Or, quite possibly, you do?”

Her smile stretches wider and a lesser woman might have ducked her head to hide it; Sara wears it proudly. “Maybe I just wanted to hear you say it, John.”

She removes her hand from him at last and John is wholly untethered for the first time since this all began. He misses the weight immediately, along with it the idea that it has been him and Sara against the world. Against Laszlo. He’s far less confident when attacks can come from either direction.

“Well,” he says, flicking away ash and hearing Laszlo huff discordantly in the background, “I’ve always found that insults are a finer build to a man’s ego than compliments could ever be. You call me a drunk, my dear, and I’ll show you a sober man.”

Sara smiles, fond, if a little patronising. “How admirable of you, John.”

“Oh yes, I imagine the inability to hold a simple glass of water without spilling it is a very attractive trait.”

He had picked up a pencil the other day and put it back down in anguish when his lines shook off the edge of the page. It occurs to him what a pair he and Laszlo must make, trying to make a difference in this world with their hands effectively tied behind their backs. When compared to Sara and her infamous dexterity, she must think them fools, if she doesn’t already.

“It’s admirable” she says, making sure to catch and hold his eye, “when you know the history.”

Her praise goes down as smooth as whiskey, just as intoxicating too, and John would do so much more if only she asked. Not to better himself, but in hopes of earning her good opinion. He’s content with acknowledging this, happier even to know that she’s just as aware of the hold she has on him.

She always did enjoy being the most knowledgeable person in the room. Not the smartest, and he means no slight in thinking that--Laszlo has them both beat in that regard--but there is knowledge beyond books that Sara seems to soak up like a thirst, and that only leaves poor John as the outlier.

Useful, as usual, to no one that matters.

“I’m glad then,” he says, “that I didn’t tell you the real reason.” At her encouraging look, John licks his thumb and pinches the end of his dwindling cigarette. Leaning down to carefully place it by the leg of his chair, he adds, “The truth being that I had simply grown tired of waking up trouserless in strange alleyways, much lighter of pocket and far heavier in conscience. Bruised, I hate to admit it, in more ways than one.”

To his right, Laszlo makes a choked off noise and over it Sara says, “I don’t think you’ve quite grasped this game yet, John.”

And once again John keeps his gaze pointed down at his lap in the following silence, rubs ash between his thumb and finger until it dissolves into his skin, gone but not gone--simple appearances, my dear, can be deceiving--and waits. Waits for Sara to call him a dirty invert so that he can show her a gentleman only trying to do the right thing.

But, of course, she doesn’t.

“On the contrary,” Laszlo says instead, eyes fantastically alight. He sits up, crowding further into the circle. In both body and mind, he’s a hand reaching out when he says, “I think John has finally decided to play.”

 

 

Laszlo drags his hand down his thigh, stopping just shy of his knee and it’s close proximity to John’s, and then does the same back up. He’s giving himself a long moment to think. Grasping at it until, at last, he says, “You never did answer my question,” and his bright eyes fix upon John.

“You ask so many questions, Laszlo, you’ll have to be a bit more specific than that.”

There really is little space between them and when Laszlo points the toe of his foot in John’s direction, he catches him in the shin. Possibly on purpose, as he then says, “That day when you buttoned my boots for me, I asked why you allow yourself to be pushed if you have no intention of ever leaving. Do you remember?”

The _me_ goes unsaid. _Leaving me_. It always does.

John sighs a long ribbon of smoke high above their heads. His second cigarette of the night, burning down much quicker than the first. And up there somewhere, with all the swirls and patterns of light, floats John’s good sense and his reason. Gone but not gone. Just momentarily displaced for as long as this exercise has him. He hopes to have them back after all of this is through. The same might not be possible for his dignity.

“You buttoned his boots?” Sara asks, from somewhere faraway.

“He asked,” John answers, without looking.

“And you did it,” Laszlo says, tilting his head, “just as I knew you would.”

“I did it,” John says, a near shout, “because how often do you ever ask me for help, Laszlo? And how rare are those times ever things that I can actually do for you?”

John can feel heat crawling up his neck as the words settle over them all, but it’s not embarrassment. Not entirely. He may not know the minds of others as well as they do but he certainly knows his own, and his keenness to satisfy is just another one of those vices he’s compelled to indulge.

It’s only taking advantage, is his argument, if he doesn’t want it. He thinks idly of that creature of instinct; a fool he was, to believe he is anything more.

Because he does indulge. And will continue to indulge because Laszlo, the wretched man, makes a career out of pushing. With his words, his theories and his suggestions. Everything but himself. Repression will make killers of us all, he says, while doing everything in his power to ignore his own advice. 

He told John to get on his knees that day, phrased it like a question, because he knew full well that John would do it. And he did. Went down as freely as if Laszlo had guided him there with a lazily assured hand upon his head.

The creature in John had pictured it afterwards. The potential in that moment had Laszlo known when to stop running his mouth. Or, more tantalising, had John been strong enough not to allow himself to be pushed, toppled over and held in place with a half buttoned boot over his heart. Had he been strong enough to push back would Laszlo had faltered, blinked surprise in that stuttered way of his, and softened. The idea of a malleable Laszlo brings the heat on his face to a boil, a feeling just as fierce as the imagined grip on his hair.

In this circle of ever watchful eyes, his growing arousal must be obvious to them both.

“John likes to feel useful, you see,” and Laszlo is cruel in his apparent lack of surprise.

John grits his teeth, ruminates over the fact that his burgeoning excitement hasn’t lessened in spite of this and with very little fight left in him, simply sighs, “Doesn’t everyone?” 

“Sara likes to feel in charge,” Laszlo says, and he’s overemphasising his words now, in that way he does using his whole head instead of his hands. “There’s a difference.”

John knows this. He knows it intimately and that makes it a constant form of frustration. “Thank God, then, that we have you to point that out for us, Laszlo. Whatever would we do without your valuable insight?”

“John,” Sara says, flat and curt, and it doesn’t make sense that he’s the one being rebuked, not when Laszlo is free to say whatever pops into that manic brain of his, no matter how hurtful. But she reaches out for the arm John has been waving about a little too freely and it just so happens to be the one holding the cigarette. Burnt mostly out at this stage, she still plucks it from his fingers and he can only sit and watch in quiet rapture as she brings it to her mouth.

She sees him looking, of course, and dismisses it with a roll of her eyes. She and Laszlo both have a habit of casually discouraging interest, which makes John the desperate one, that he keeps trying to seek it out from them.

Taking in her hollowed cheeks and practiced hands, it does little to cool his blood and they truly deserve each other, John thinks, a maddening pair put on this Earth just to confound him.

“And yourself, Laszlo?” Sara asks, punctuated by a small puff of smoke, far braver than John could ever hope to be. “Where do you fit in all this?”

John’s not entertaining an answer. Not an honest one anyway. But when he glances over, Laszlo is on some kind of edge. In a move that comes across as endearingly childlike, he tucks his lame arm against his stomach and wraps it up with the other. The thin shirt he’s wearing does little to shelter him.

And, upon seeing this, John melts. It’s a form of bloodletting that has his frustration draining away, unable to resist the vulnerability that’s being freely offered to him. There’s a six year old boy right there, literally holding himself together.

Torn open bodies, they don’t always heal the same, if at all, and when Laszlo opens his mouth, it’s quite possible that John’s soft heart is allowing him to smile encouragingly. A balm, he hopes, for a tortured soul.

“A former patient of mine,” Laszlo starts to say, “she once posited to me her theory on the minds of men.” He pauses to drag his fingers across his jaw and the rasping sound it makes is awfully loud compared to his careful tone. John leans in, as if to catch the words up in his hands as Laszlo continues. “Her theory being that what they seek in their own tastes might stem from something that was negatively done to them in the past.”

“A theory that our killer falls into,” Sara says, offhand, and Laszlo nods without really listening.

“While I was there a man in a dress and an apron brought us tea at her request. And she explained to me how this man would go to her to play servant, attend to her every direction and later leave. To go back to his life as a foreman of a brewery, where he gives the orders as opposed to follows them.”

Sara freezes with the cigarette halfway to her mouth, and there’s something very important happening here but John can only look back and forth between them while feeling like the rope in his hands, the one keeping him afloat, is rapidly escaping his grasp. Laszlo’s expression is shockingly open for the first time but it’s lost to John and his friction burnt hands.

“I’m sorry,” John says, openly blinking his confusion when it becomes apparent that there’s no more to this story, “but what exactly are you trying to say here?”

Laszlo sucks in a shaky breath and stares back. He’s saying something that John is unable to piece together. Until, that is, Sara shifts to the very edge of her seat and takes over.

“Is that what you want, Laszlo?” She pinches the end of John’s cigarette dead and drops it at her feet, all without taking her eyes off of Laszlo. “You want to give over your control, is that it? You want vulnerability, but as a choice.”

At that, Laszlo finally breaks away and the grim line of his mouth disappears fully into his beard. He doesn’t deny it and that’s the trick to dealing with Laszlo, he’s found--for a man who talks as much as he does, his meaning often comes from all that he doesn’t say.

But this, John thinks, this is so far beyond him.

He thumbs at the edge of his jacket idly, and then after a moment of hesitation decides to buck it free of his shoulders and strip it down his arms. He drops it in a heap on the floor, long past caring about formality. The cigarette case in his pocket hits harder with a reproving sound and it’s like a gunshot shattering glass, that last thread of societal decency violently severed.

What the three of them are now is an evolved form of the people who once each stood behind a chair with their hands clenched.

It’s an altogether different monster now when Sara curls that same hand over John’s now bared shoulder to stop him from opening his mouth. To say--something, he’s not even sure what it would have been, something resembling a confession, quite possibly--and the awful creature in him reacts to her assurity, her control, as though he’s a man starving for it.

A curious reaction considering Laszlo’s downturned eyes and hunched shoulders are causing him just as much trouble.

He’s reeling, John is, a man stuck very much in the middle of two extremes.

It only gets worse from there.

 

 

“If John asked you to do something,” Sara says, “would you do it? Something simple, I mean, something innocuous?”

Laszlo nods. A jerky up and down motion that conveys consent.

She doesn’t ask John anything similar, just mimics the motion with her pinkie finger, up and down the side of John’s neck, and throws him at the deep end.

 

 

On the chalkboard over Laszlo’s shoulder there are a dozen handwritten lines warning the dangers of indulging perversity. Sitting either side of John, he has two contradictions.

As he considers this, he finds he wants another cigarette. He wants something to do with his hands. He wants--he wants so damn much.

Sara sees this as readily as she sees everything else.

“What would you like him to do, John?” she asks, and the frank and open shock of it has John lying.

“This is ridiculous,” he says, “I don’t _want_ him to do anything.”

She doesn’t accept that. And rightly so.

If John were a cruel man, he’d tell Laszlo to unbutton his cuffs. He’d manage one just fine but struggle with the other, only John doesn’t fully trust in his own ability not to give in and help. That would be far crueler, he feels, if he then pushed Laszlo’s hand away to peel the sleeve up his arm himself.

“Oh, I don’t know. What if you got on your knees?” He tries to say it as though the thought just popped into his head but judging from the way Sara smiles at him, sly and agreeable, he’s missed the mark entirely. John closes his eyes and breathes in deep.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to ask,” Sara says, and since when, John wonders, did she become such an expert.

“She’s right,” Laszlo says.

And that, he supposes, is that.

John steels himself so that his voice does not shake and tries again. “Get on your knees, Laszlo.”

In the dark of his own eyelids, John hears the sound of a chair scraping back and then a hand presses down on his knee and his eyes shoot open because there, right before them, is Laszlo, sinking to the ground in the small space between their feet. John must make a noise as Sara snorts in amusement, a completely unladylike sound, but the image has to be throwing her off too if they’re both descending into hysterics.

“What now?” he asks, adrift.

“Well, John,” Sara says carefully, “that’s up to you.”

Down at their feet, Laszlo sits back on his heels and the movement has his knee skidding out from underneath him slightly. He goes to catch himself with his lame arm and it holds long enough for him to resettle. But now there’s ash streaking up the full length of his thigh and if he touches John again he’ll leave behind a handprint.

Laszlo is dirtying himself just because John told him to and the power in that is overwhelming. He’s growing harder in his trousers just from the anticipation.

Sara reaches over to put her hand on top of his and impulsively John brings it up to his mouth. It’s not so much a kiss that he gives her, more a slow brush of his lips to the back of her hand. A thank you of sorts, for having the courage to build them up to a point where they can all fall down together.

He drags his mouth back and forth and breathes in the scent of her skin. Bitter curling smoke from his stolen cigarette and something lighter buried underneath. His clean shaven face doesn’t scratch the way Laszlo’s would and he’s putting that thought in her head just by offering her the comparison.

He desperately wants her to be as shaken by this as he is. There’s to be no surrogacy here, with either their feelings or their actions, and she must agree because, with a subtle tilt of her chin, she brings their joined hands forward to where Laszlo’s head is bent over their knees.

They crack his shell together by sweeping his hair back, out of his face and down over his skull. Laszlo follows the motion through until his head is tilted far up enough for John to see that his eyes are closed and his lips are parted.

“Tell us,” Sara says, sotto voce, “what you’re feeling right now.”

Laszlo swallows, made all the more obvious from the severe angle of his neck. John can’t help but feel a little disappointed that when Laszlo does answer, his voice sounds just as it always does, clinically detached.

“I’ve been told the pleasure of submission comes from the trust. Opposing emotions, once again, combining to create something positive.”

With a roll of his eyes, John cuts him off. “She’s not asking what they feel, Laszlo.” And then, recalling how it felt when Sara did it to him, John drags the nail of his thumb through the hair at the base of Laszlo’s neck, and the shiver he gets in response cuts right through him and into Sara. “She’s asking what you feel.”

Very deliberately, Laszlo spreads his hands over his knees, opens his eyes and says, truthfully, “I trust you. Both of you.”

And it’s that funny, roundabout way of his, telling them he likes it. There’s pleasure to be had at this, as long as they’re the ones providing it, and that’s the kicker for John. An idea he thought terrible, wonderfully indulged. 

Useful, he thinks, at long last. As long as Sara is there to wordlessly tell him where to take it.

Which she does. He takes Laszlo’s face in their combined palms, at her instruction, and kisses him.

Gently, gently, as though he’s kissing a woman, he urges Laszlo into a better position, drawing him up on his knees so that he can meet him somewhere in the middle. There’s cigarette smoke still coating his tongue and he wants badly for Laszlo to taste it. So that the man can understand all that he drives John to do, all of his vices, all of his bad habits, but he keeps it closed mouthed and chaste when that's enough to have Laszlo shivering in their soft and gentle hold.

Maybe he’ll get the message from that. The evidence of John’s restraint against the monster that is instinct.

When John pulls away, Laszlo is shaking his head. Looking desperately to Sara, to John, to somewhere in between.

“I don’t--I don’t know what to do,” Laszlo says, and finally--finally, he sounds affected. Involved. Present.

John is straining against his trousers but he would have to take his hands off of Laszlo to do anything about it, and it feels wrong anyway, to put himself first like that. This is not his moment, not really. Not his, not Sara’s either, it’s Laszlo’s.

“Touch yourself,” John tells him, the only fair solution, and Laszlo’s eyes go impossibly wide.

“John,” Sara says sharply. She’s not scandalised exactly because she’s laughing, light and airy, but she’s definitely something. Reserved, John settles on, and all of a sudden it strikes him that he’s the experienced man here. The most knowledgeable one in the room. For the first time ever he understands how someone could get intoxicated from this feeling.

“Over your trousers,” John amends, with a two fingered stroke across Laszlo’s beard and it’s meant to be soothing but just the intimate sound it makes thrills them all.

Elevates the excitement to the point where Laszlo rocks forward on his heels, seeking his mouth but not quite reaching it. He’s close enough that John can smell clean sweat and heat at his hairline and while he drops another kiss there, Sara drags John’s hand to her chest so that he can feel her thundering heart trying to break free from her body.

“I’m afraid I won’t last,” Laszlo says, a quiet secret shared very close, and John doesn’t laugh. Can feel the urge scratching at his throat but he smothers it down.

It stops being funny the moment Laszlo actually follows through and pushes his hips up to meet the heel of his hand. Laszlo grunts and his eyes flutter closed and that’s almost enough for John. Untouched and helpless, he almost comes from that image alone.

“John,” Sara says again, and she’s been saying little else all night. Varied tones, even more varied situations, but now she sounds wanting. Eager almost. Though John’s having difficulty tearing his eyes away from Laszlo pleasuring himself at his feet to look at her. “John Moore,” she says now, and John turns just in time to meet her mouth as it descends on his.

She’s a lot bolder than Laszlo, opens up immediately even if she’s not exactly sure what she’s trying to achieve. It’s slicker, more intense, and Laszlo’s watching it happen. He tries to slow her down, to channel that passion into a single direction, but she’d always been wild. Too wild for him to ever pin her down, and so he lets her take charge, moves when she moves him, takes what’s being gifted to him with enthusiasm.

He’s so caught up in the draw of submission--he sees what Laszlo sees, feels what he’s currently feeling--that he almost doesn’t hear Laszlo make a noise different from all the others.

It’s a needy sound that worms its way inside of John, makes him flush all over, and Laszlo wasn’t lying when he said he wouldn’t last long. Sara allows him to pull back just enough to witness the moment Laszlo spills over the pressure of his own left hand. Needing no more encouragement than two kisses, one of which he wasn’t even a part of, to finish himself off.

It’s flattering and maddening, all at once. Something Laszlo has finally mastered. And it’s a problem, John thinks, that’s going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

“You couldn’t,” John says, half distracted by Sara nosing at his jaw, and half distracted by Laszlo withering enough to drop his forehead against John’s thigh and breath out hot air, entirely on purpose. “You couldn’t have meant for this to happen?” he finally manages to ask.

“The truth, John,” Sara says, too close for John to read her expression. “It’s all I was looking for."


End file.
